BLOUNTVILLE — "Thank God for guns," said Sullivan County Commissioner Baxter Hood, addressing full the commission Monday regarding the massacre of schoolchildren, teachers and administrators at a K-4 school in Connecticut three days before.

"No one was armed," Hood said of the victims. "The outcome probably would have been vastly different."

Baxter said tighter gun-contol laws are not the answer, and in fact the American public should be infuriated each time media has a story with that side of the issue presented.